Fine!" muttered Mogget. "Wet, cold, and full of holes. Another fun day on the river.

A hundred hundred heartbeats..." whispered Sabriel, tears falling down her face.

Ow do you knock out a Denizen?" asked Suzy. "I tried it myself once or twice, but just hitting them never works." "It is not the force of the blow, but the authority with which it is delivered," quoth the raven.

Time plays tricks between here and home," said Mogget sepulchrally, frightening the life out of the telephone operator.

I certainly have had experiences of a sense of wonder at the world and a feeling that even though it could all be explained rationally, it still feels that there is more to it.

But we survived, didn’t we? That makes it an adventure. If you get killed it’s a tragedy.

I don't do all the background and the worldbuilding before I start the story. What I do is I work out the bare minimum I need to start the story, and often that really is a bare minimum - it's a character in a situation, and I know nothing about the character, I know nothing about the situation, and then I think about it for a long time, and make notes about where I think the story is going to go and so on, but I don't really make notes to do with the background or the magic system or the world.